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Breakthrough Starshot ‘Sprites’ in Orbit

Monday, August 7, 2017

'Sprites' are four-gram spacecraft, developed and tested at Cornell since 2007. This technology is now at the core of the Breakthrough Starshot project, whose goal is to send a small probe to the nearest star system. MAE Professor Mason Peck and Dr. Zac Manchester, who received his Ph.D. from Cornell MAE in 2015, are currently on the Advisory Board for the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. The Foundation just launched a Sprite on the Venta-1 satellite, the first successful demonstration of Sprite communications from over 1000 km away.